The Invisible - A Reflection on Faith

A friend asked me today how I go on when life seems so difficult sometimes.

It has been because of my faith that I didn't lose my mind. It is because of faith that there is meaning in all that goes so wrong, even if we don't understand it at that moment in time. It is my belief there is an afterlife, that our loved ones truly never leave us but are instead waiting behind a wall of air for us to join them again.
In very little time, I have lost the ability to walk, and learned how to mobilize again. Although I am still using a chair, I am able to connect with others on a level I could never before understand. In this short time, I lost my best friend of twenty years to cancer. A limb was torn from my body and blood spilled from the core of my heart. Yet since then I have never felt closer to God in my life. But why? How can I feel so close to what I cannot see? Because He is so close, His breath is buried deep within my heart, waiting for me to join my friend when my time has come.
Within two months, as I wait for my next (and hopefully final) surgery, my other limb, my dog Reggie, who has hardly ever left my side barring the operating room, was diagnosed with cancer. His surgery was swift and he begins oncology appointments this week.
Of course my husband is my rock, my children are my shade, and my parents feed me with evidence that love is pure. So when I have a day when the skies grow dark and my feet are clogged in mud, when I wonder if I can at all go on, it is the invisible that holds me strong. It is a knowing that life goes on, until I shed my earthly skin. So while I'm here, I try to exchange the darkness for the invisible light that faith lets in.
Is it denial to get me through? I don't think so, because denial just gets one lost in a storm of unanswered thoughts. Why would I sail at sea in a storm without a sale, or stand in an awe beneath the stars that offer a hint of where I am?
So I choose faith to get me there, to a place of peace where I can breathe when the burdens of life seem too heavy to bare, it's the invisible that offers me wings.